This revolution affected the Jews and consequently Judaism, like every important change in history. The equalization of the Jews in France, although sealed by the constitution, had suffered somewhat under the two Bourbons, Louis XVIII and Charles X, as the nobility and the Catholic clergy were possessed of great influence, and the officials understood their hint not to be too friendly to the Jews. The reactionary Catholic clergy began to renew their intolerance towards the Jews, and the police displayed hostility to the Jewish ritual. Had the Bourbons been able to gratify their own wishes by discrediting the constitution as well as liberty and equality, the French Jews would have been the first victims, and like their German co-religionists would once more have been placed under exceptional laws. The July Revolution was thus of momentous importance to them. The first assembly of deputies under King Louis Philippe, who desired to execute the Charter, at once considered the abolition of all existing inequalities, however slight, between Jews and Christians. One of the deputies, Viennet, proposed (August 7, 1830) to remove from the constitution the recognition of a state religion. His proposition was supported on all sides. A few months later (November 13) the minister of public education, Mérilhou, brought forward a motion to place Judaism upon an equal footing with the other two creeds, to pay salaries from the public treasury to the Synagogue and the rabbis, as well as to the Church and its ministers. He praised the French Jews, saying that since the removal of their disabilities by the Revolution they had shown themselves worthy of the privileges granted them. He exhorted the deputies to agree to the law of equality for the three creeds. His motion was adopted by a large majority.
In the chamber of peers it was more difficult to pass the law decreeing the equality of Judaism and Christianity. The advocates of the motion were eloquent in their recognition of Jewish virtues. The names of those Jews who had left behind them a glorious reputation in history were mentioned, such as Philo, the representative of Jewish philosophy in ancient times; Maimonides, of that of "the Middle Ages and modern days"; Mendelssohn, "the sage, whom philosophic Germany was in the habit of comparing with Plato."
When the division was taken in the chamber of peers (January 1, 1831), the law for the complete equalization of the Jews was carried by 89 votes to 57. Thus the last barriers between the adherents of Judaism and their Christian neighbors were removed in France. King Louis Philippe, on the 8th of February, ratified the law, which enacted that the French rabbis, like the Catholic and Protestant clergymen, should receive part of their salary from the public exchequer. The High School (Collège Rabbinique) for the training of rabbis, which a short time before had been founded in Metz, was also recognized as a state institution, and partly supported from the public budget. At the same time, the Senate at Frankfort-on-the-Main brought forward a motion to grant civil rights to the Jews, particularly abrogating the limitations to marriage. But of the 90 members of the legislative body, two-thirds voted against it.
The shock caused by the events of July, which was felt also in Germany, awakened a feeling of self-dependence; it dispelled all timidity and false shame in speaking about Jews and Judaism, which had hitherto been avoided, as if a loud word would have precipitated the avalanche of Judæophobia with destructive force. Even Jews belonging to so-called good society, who, for the sake of some material advantage, had been anxious to have people forget that they were members of an oppressed race, and had preferred to conceal or ignore the injustice done them, began to appreciate their own worth and ceased to be ashamed of being recognized as Jews. This change of sentiment manifested in different ways, like every change, was brought about by influential personalities.
Gabriel Riesser (born 1806, died 1860), a man of noble mind and great energy, took a prominent part in awakening this self-respect. However bitter the complaints of the German Jews of the disgrace brought upon them by immigrant Polish Jews, they were amply compensated by Riesser. His spirit of firm determination he derived more from his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Raphael Cohen, who had emigrated from Poland, than from his weak, good-natured German father. Gabriel Riesser in every respect belonged to modern times. Unlike most of the promoters of the new spirit, he was not rooted in the old order of things. His thoughts, feelings, and dreams were German, and only slight traces of his Jewish origin are perceptible. To Judaism in its national form, as the leaven of history, Riesser was indifferent; only the recollections of his youth and his parental home bound him to the faith. Beyond that, he looked upon it as an attenuated system of diluted doctrines, which he tacitly professed without desiring to defend them. He suspected, however, that Judaism might continue to flourish in a rejuvenated healthy form, though he did not define clearly wherein this revival should consist. To promote it was altogether outside his sphere. Had he not been hampered in his chosen vocation, he would have been a quiet German citizen, a conscientious judge or lawyer, without troubling himself to improve the world or rectify a corrupt state of affairs. German Jew-hatred roused him to defend the derided cause of his fellow-sufferers. His first work as a jurist attracted attention, and he tried to become an attorney in his native town, but was rejected. He next sought to deliver lectures upon jurisprudence in Heidelberg, but the professor's chair was refused him likewise. His gentle, peaceable nature revolted against such foolish exclusions. Thus Riesser, who felt no particular call to work for the general good, was driven to become an agitator, not alone for the freedom of his co-religionists, but also for that of the whole German nation. He made it his duty in life to secure equal privileges for the Jews, and to defend them whenever attacked. "The unspeakable sufferings throughout two centuries of many millions of persons who patiently waited for deliverance" weighed heavily upon him. His ideal was Lessing. In his first pamphlet (1831) he spoke with conscious pride, not alone against German rulers, but against the people, who refused permission to the Jews to ascend even the lowest rung on the ladder of distinction. Nor did he spare his co-religionists who, on account of superior education and social position, contemptuously looked down upon the mass of Jews, and were ashamed of the name of Jew. "If unjust hatred," he exclaimed, "clings to our name, should we not, instead of denying it, rather use all our strength to secure honor for it?" He contributed freely towards the removal of the contempt cast upon this name. Riesser aimed chiefly at defending the honor and dignity of the Jews. No selfish attainment of advantages withheld stimulated his action; but a desire to take part in the unceasing contest between freedom and oppression, justice and injustice, truth and falsehood. Filled with indignation he openly represented to the German rulers that the reason for depriving the Jews of their rights as men was the hope that they might thereby be induced to accept baptism. He also reproached the faint-hearted Jews who, having a comfortable position, separated themselves from the main body of their brethren, or by a false confession purchased equality, or handed over their children to the Church to smooth their path through life. Riesser desired to see societies established which should energetically work for the emancipation of the Jews. Sympathizers were to be united in a kind of covenant that, from a sense of honor, they might remain true to their fellow-sufferers, until the contest was decided. Ten years previously the Berlin Society for Culture had not dared to publish such a programme. But between Edward Gans and Gabriel Riesser came the July Revolution. Riesser also invited Christians to join, inasmuch as it behoved well-disposed men of every belief to participate in the release of an enslaved people.
Riesser's words produced their due effect; they came at an opportune moment, when men's minds had become susceptible. His mild though determined utterances made a deeper impression than Börne's with their incisive keenness. The tone of positive certainty with which Riesser foretold the ultimate victory of liberty infused hope into every heart. Various favorable events which now took place appeared to put a seal on his prophecy. For the first time the question of the emancipation of the Jews began to be discussed in the English Parliament, and the chief leaders in the House of Commons were in favor of the removal of the disabilities. A resolution was passed in the Electorate of Hesse, the first German province to legalize the emancipation of the Jews. This gave Riesser courage to pursue his ideal further. He was indefatigable in his efforts for the cause to which he had devoted his life, but he kept in view the honor and credit to be obtained, more than any desire for material gain. Not even the most unimportant ceremony might be sacrificed to obtain rights of citizenship, if they could be procured only at such a cost; a rule which he most emphatically laid down on two occasions.
The Jews of Baden, as a token of their gratitude, presented him with a beautifully designed picture by the Jewish painter Oppenheim, which artistically depicted the transition period in Jewish life, the separation of the old and the new. It was called "The Return of the Jewish Warrior," who is represented as surprising his parents and family in the repose of the Sabbath. In his letter acknowledging this gift, Riesser remarked, "The father is foolish who wishes to wrap his son in the garments of antiquity ... but wanting in dignity is the son ashamed of his father, the generation ashamed of the past." This deeply-rooted feeling was communicated to the younger generation with the more intensity, because it proceeded, not from an official representative of Judaism, but from a lawyer whose being was pervaded by the German spirit. Riesser made the emancipation question popular by his contest with the Judæophobists Paulus, Edward Meyer, Pfizer, Streckfuss, and other driveling enemies of freedom in the German Assemblies of the estates, who utilized the contempt attached to the Jews to bring the whole struggle for liberty into disrepute. Riesser further managed to have the Jewish question placed on the programme of the liberalists. Young Germany, and all who took part against oppression, were thenceforth compelled to inscribe religious liberty and the equality of all classes upon their banner, however great might be their antipathy against the Jews. But Riesser performed a far greater service, by rousing a feeling of dignity in the Jews, and destroying that false shame which so-called cultured people felt at the name of Jew. The sincerity of his convictions and the genuineness of his sentiments, as evinced in every stroke of his pen, opened all hearts to him.
At this time men of commanding intellect were not to be found in great numbers among the Jews; but the younger generation was rich in men of character who, as it were, compensated for the losses occasioned by the Berlin Society for Culture. One of these sterling characters was the bosom friend of Riesser, a physician, Solomon Ludwig Steinheim (born, Altona, 1790; died, Zürich, 1866). His was a highly gifted nature, which dwelt upon the sunny height of thought; and from this eminence the foolish pursuits of the multitude appeared like mist formations, blown hither and thither by the wind.
In Steinheim was revealed, in all its splendor and all its powers of redemption, the Jewish thought—without which Judaism were merely a thousand years' dream—that the Jewish people has a gigantic mission, with which its teachings and fortunes are in consonance. This idea may have been unconsciously aroused in Steinheim by Isaac Bernays. Together with his wealth of thought, Steinheim was skillful in clothing his ideas in an interesting form, and adorning them with his rich gifts of eloquence. He might be compared to Jehuda Halevi, the Castilian poet-philosopher, had he been gifted with higher poetical talents. His first production, "The Songs of Obadiah ben Amos in Exile," displayed germs of the fruitful seed of thought which he disseminated. A Jewish sage, Obadiah, in Egypt, describes to his son Eliakim, supposed to be living at the time of the Ptolemies, the different stages of greatness and abjection through which the Jewish people were to pass.
"It is the design of Providence that a weak people, appointed to proclaim salvation, shall be persecuted, hunted down, and sacrificed among millions of enemies throughout thousands of years, and nevertheless continue alive and active. Our ancestors received for themselves and their descendants the consecrated office of the priesthood. The family of Jacob, since its beginning, has been alternately dispersed and gathered together, and thus trained for its vocation."